Claire Tomalin Quotes
Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biographies of women is helping to change the general picture of the past presented by historians.
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Quotes to Explore
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I was growing up in the 50's and 60's. Back then they didn't even know what dyslexia was.
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In Kenya women are the first victims of environmental degradation, because they are the ones who walk for hours looking for water, who fetch firewood, who provide food for their families.
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A fashion show is like a 10-minute play, but there's all this anticipation; Everyone arriving, finding their seats, then there's 10 minutes of people walking past and clothes and music, then the whole thing is finished.
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You have to really love women in order to really just have a respect for women and love them. No man - I don't care what kind of man it is, how feminine he is - they never could understand what we go through as far as physically and mentally.
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All my life, I've been working with male directors, which I've really enjoyed. And I'm lucky in that I've worked with men who have a lot of respect for women. But working with a woman is a different experience. It feels like the communication is different.
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I am just doing photo shoots. It's not something that extraordinary. I'm not a great artist, I'm not writing books, I'm not a painter, and people in the streets ask me for a picture or a note, and I say, 'Why?'
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The more insight I get, the more scared I get of women in general.
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When you are growing up, everyone will help you. When you reach the top, everyone will start pulling you down. The same people who help you will be the same people who try to pull you down.
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I've done stuff in the past and followed in the footsteps of my heroes, and each time, it felt a little bit surreal.
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It takes leadership to improve safety. And I started off the movement in my time, but the person who has done more over the past 20 to 30 years and who has led it is Professor Sid Watkins.
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I respond very well to well-written material and women who have had an effect on society, something tragic or monumental has happened to them.
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What is sad for women of my generation is that they weren't supposed to work if they had families. What were they going to do when the children are grown - watch the raindrops coming down the window pane?
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My kids have a competitive drive I never had growing up.
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I have been immeasurably honored to serve the people of Maine for nearly 40 years in public office and for the past 17 years in the United States Senate. It was incredibly difficult to decide that I would not seek a fourth term in the Senate.
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Habit, if not resisted, soon becomes necessity.
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I was very, very sick when I was growing up in Russia. The ambulance constantly came to our house. I had horrible asthma that is easily treated in America, but they didn't even have inhalers back in Russia.
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So we all got basically what we wanted, and as far as the women are concerned, he figured that 30 good women could handle a crew of 300 anyway. So that's how we ended up with our crew.
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Fashion really is women's liberation in a lot of ways. Look at how many women in this country are depressed about how they look and how they think they have to look! It's really sad. And it's not about money.
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I think that growth happens and that learning happens in anybody's life regardless of what profession you're in.
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The business of the endgame is maneuvring to control critical squares, advancing or blockading passed pawns, preparing a breakthrough by the king, or exploiting the subtle superiority of one piece over another.
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We had physical constraints that helped us to focus our attention, to zoom in on the real policy constraint. That isn’t the case in the division. Over there we have excess capacity going through our ears. We have excess engineering resources that we succeed so brilliantly in wasting. I’m sure that there is no lack of markets. We simply don’t know how to put our act together to capitalize on what we have.
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I can't be impatient. It would show on the floor, and I won't compete if I'm thinking about getting the ball.
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[Writing] books is really fun because your "voice" is pretty undiluted. There is a very direct connection between yourself and your audience. You will have an editor, but their job is to help you clarify or improve your voice, not change it.
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Biographers use historians more than historians use biographers, although there can be two-way traffic - e.g., the ever-growing production of biographies of women is helping to change the general picture of the past presented by historians.